


West of the River

by Flora (florahart)



Category: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Huck and Jim head west to find further adventures and grow up a little more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	West of the River

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/gifts).



> The canon on which this is drawn makes heavy use of dialect, represented in writing. Some readers really hate that, but it felt just wrong not to retain that feature; in the same vein, while I did not use the single word that most commonly draws criticisms in the source text, there is reference to race in terms Huck understands. It would make no sense for this character to use modern terminology, and I hope it is clear my intent is for his intent to be relatively neutral despite the use of some words I and you might opt against.

I 'spect, if you are reading this notice, then you have heard of me before now, reading in a book by Mr Samuel Clemens who sometimes calls himself by another name entirely. He wrote stories about me twice, though one were more a story of Tom that 'bout me, and I ain't never heard if he tried it again, but by now, I reckon he's gone on to 'nother project, and anyway, I'm a man now, and I can tell my life story for my own self.

Trouble is, you might, and you might not, have ever read them stories. Might hap you only found me and my scribbles by accident, and in that case, you don't know none of the background of the story I'm 'bout to tell here, on how me and Jim got to be family.

Now, I growed up in Miss'sippi where it's now that there's such discombobulance in every very nook and cranny after the Yanks come and made everyone clear cross from Lou'siana over to Carolina turn loose their slaves, and sometimes, without that I tell it otherwise, men in the free west conceive regular-like that it must be I left the south all them years ago in _order_ to provide Jim a home that he weren't able to hold there. I do confess a passing resemblance between that there and how it ended up, but that ain't how it started, even if I sometimes let 'em think it. What you want to know here is that I growed up thinkin' slaves wasn't men, like near to everyone round me, and it took a journey, a king, a passel o troubles, and a pretend bout with the smallpox to come to any other perception, and even then, young men is sometimes fools.

So, now that I told you that, if you ain't run screamin' yet, I reckon I could get along with some of the rest, and let you turn away your eyes if you find it past your toleration at any convenient point.

Once we was on our own again, just me and Jim, not tied into anything to do with Tom or the Reverend or no one, I put it to him, how we might ought go west. He thought, first up, that it should be north more, up through Missourah and into the free states further on, but after a while I convinced him mostly, plus he would still do what I said, and he and I set off to cross away through Texas.

Now I been told Texas ain't no more nor no less than any state, if you check it 'cording to the rules of this country, which as I heared them are meant to make it all the same for each part, only with a good-sized strand of wiggle room for individgiality. There's them what wants to make that strand more on the wide side, and them what wants to narrow it down to nothin' but a trickle, but over-all, point of that strand is to account for problems like how Jim weren't free in some states, and were in others, what with how folks in some parts ain't got the same opinion as folks in t'other. Texas was one where he weren't, exactly, though that weren't so easy a answer sometimes as others. I didn't figure it made no difference, on account of how we was traveling together, and anyone would think he was mine. It was just the one state, was what I told him when we started, and I didn't hold with beating slaves any more anyhow.

There was two things--maybe a lot more, but two is what I recall--about my plan which I soon come to figure wasn't well thought of at all.

First one is, for all Texas, like I said before, is just the same as any other state it ain't the same size by a whole long while. Walking 'cross Texas is a job like to take a man's whole life, seems like. So once we got a week in, we still had 'proximately forever to keep on, and Jim still wantin' to turn north. He was stubborn about it, kept bringin' it up until I had to forbid it in service to appearance. It looked wrong for a white owner to let him just keep on yammerin'.

A smart man by now might have worked out what my second problem was, which was this: Jim weren't my slave, but in pretending--which, now it's no lie to say that had to happen; he and I both would have been leastwise hurt, and worstwise killt by hangin' or shootin' or maybe just folks throwin' rocks, if most or half the folks had'a known, because he was still escaped, and I was still helpin' him--in pretending, I made him be mine no matter.

It was all the way most to Houston before I got that tumbled round in my head, and then I was sorry as I ever could be because I knowed we already got past the point of if I ought not to do this once and there I was turned right around to catch him all over, but Jim, he wouldn't hear it, just said I was as good as any master could be, only better cause he couldn't have to mind.

Jim's logickality weren't always top-notch, but I was glad of his forgivin' heart.

We did consider turning north then, but trouble was, it was Injun country to the north, and Texas is just as wide up to down by the map as it is twixt west and east anyhow, so it happened we was more like stuck than free, either of us.

Was Jim worked out how to go on. He proposed if north were out, and west was a-stretching six, seven hundred miles and more, a number which I couldn't hardly think on without makin' a blister where my brain ought to be, and east was out for bein' impossible, then that left south, and maybe the Mexicans, even though they talked like Frenchmen, would be a improvement.

Then things got a mite simpler for just a day or two, but it's only natural they also went and got awful complicated right quick. We got crosst the border all right, even if first we found we had to work up the letters to say Jim had indenturey for to seem like all the others, on account this was how they said was done. But that were all right, because soon as we was past the crowd, we tore that paper right up and called ourself Mexicans because the Mexicans had laws with none of the capturin' and returnin', and even some of the laws said it weren't the last bit legal to hold slaves. So that was good.

But then it _was_ true, the Mexicans spoke French, best we could perceive, and weren't neither of us with much of a knack.

We agreed to rely on luck then, since we wasn't about to ask after any kind of plan, and after a while we found us a man what could turn-state, he called it, to take a statement and turn it backwards into French. He found out we was lookin' for how to get by, so he did some askin' for us, and soon enough got us a place on a crew bound for what some said was Mr Gadsden's land--I didn't never meet him--where it was they'd set up to build them a rail all the way from Harrisburgh, what we had most recently left, maybe all the way to the ocean.

Ain't neither of us had ever seen a ocean by then, only the river and the great delta that was maybe part of a sea, so once we had assured it wouldn't be we had to go back up in Texas for the work because when it was all spellt out, the rail went the other way about, we traveled just fine. First Jim, and then after a bit me even, started to jumble together a word here and there out of their French, and some of the men was good enough to draw us pictures with their fingers in dirt or with water on a rock.

Lot of ways, it was like the river again, the two of us all but alone, but other ways, it was friendly-like, and put me to mind of the best parts of the Widow's church, with everybody to sing or chant a bit sometime, and then other time to say a prayer, or to worry about a friend. I didn't worry none about the couple of friends I missed; Jim was with me and safe enough, and ain't no reason to fret for Tom or anyone like the Widow or the Judge. And Pap, he never needed nothing of me anyhow. So we got along, and after a bit, we come to know the names of them all, and learnt that it weren't all odd ones: One sounded like Haysuse was funny, maybe, but Tomás minded me of Tom, and he had a eeha back at his home I guess--and if I got his dancin' about to show me right, that meant a young'un--name of Susána, so that was like home, or close enough.

Sooner than seemed like it ought, we'd got to the end of the road, and they done put us to work. I liked to think I was strong, but seemed I never done no hard work, 'fore that. Jim thought I might light out again, soon as I had a day of hammerin' stakes an' move over and hammer another, but funny thing, I didn't mind the rules so much when it was for makin' a thing what was worthwhile, and I didn't mind the work when it was among friends. Ameegos, was that word, and I decided I liked its cheerful kind of sound.

End of the summer, we was well off, me and Jim, mostly on account neither of us never thought we needed much. Weren't a reason in the world to leave the place, so we stuck around. Folks up the coast some ways had other kinds of work, some of it harder and some easier, so when the railroad work moved off to far east, we split with that bunch, headed on across to see that ocean then moved us north on the coast a while in what they was callin' Alta Californy. Found us some work for a little while there pluckin' runt fruits off their trees, which job neither of us never did like for the way it made us to climb way out with no kind of solid branch to rest our feet, and then made a little trip east into a desert like nothin' you ever saw. Couple a our new ameegos stuck with us all that while when we drifted, west and north then east and south again. Turned out Jim, who weren't shy on things what he knew how to make before, had a true knack for hard work and turnin' it out good, so 'ventually when we wound up back in New Mexico Territory, it weren't hard for him to find things to do.

By then, though, the slave laws had gone and got complicated in New Mexico, too, and near to once a week, we thought about leavin' again. Coulda, with all we knowed and seen, but there was somethin' to be said for settledness, so we resolved to remain unless things went and got unbearable again. And as long as we was settled, there was a thing I wanted to do, which was--and if you have read Mr Clemens' stories, I 'spect here is where you will believe I'm spinnin' out a tale--once we'd set ourselfs up a house with a good table and a couple of chairs, and two beds better'n we ever had anywhere but the one I had at the Widow's (better'n there too, for what you call envirement), I found me a school, so's to see if I couldn't get me a couple more rows of tables past six times seven, and maybe enough letters to send word to Tom that we was well. Weren't much of a school: bunch of kids and me in a room and everything shared and passed from hand to hand, but turned out, mostly I liked it.

It was a wonderment to me, how different it is to want to go to school on purpose. Still I weren't never any _good_ at it, mind, but I liked it pretty well, and I sure liked the girl which was acting as the teacher, which weren't hardly no older than me. Might be it was her big brown eyes that I liked better than how she axed me to learn words don't nobody need, but that didn't matter none; we had fun.

So that was the pattern, then, for a couple a years, work odd jobs some of the year and then be a while picking' at books. After a while, Jim started makin' noises like maybe he could learn too, more than the baby scraps of letters he got before along the way, so I tried to teach him, and 'ventually when I told it to the teacher, she come to visit on Sunday, and she brung with her her sister, which was older than us, and that sister started teachin' Jim.

You might a guessed how that would go along, but if you didn't, turned out he liked her big brown eyes same as I liked Elena's, and 'long in a while, seemed to them they ought t' get married.

This built us a problem, course, account of how Elena and me, we was thinking most about the same for our own selfs, and it confused my mind, the idea me and Jim might marry two girls that was the same--not the same _one_, I don't mean, but you see it, I 'spect--but after a bit it dawned on me, we was already mostly brothers every other kind of way, so if it was wrong, then that was just too bad. I forget how them rules just ain't put together right sometimes, when it's Jim.

Anyhow, there was almost a pickle there, with how it ain't 'llowed for me to marry colored, and for him to marry white, but we got by. Their pap's white as I am, and their ma's Mexican (which, turns out, ain't the same as French), but that made the both of them white for all they was just as dark-skinned as a fair many of the slaves back home. This don't make a lick a sense, which left me to thinkin' none of it never did, but anyway, me and Elena got hitched, and once we thought on it a while, we come to reckon it didn't matter if some judge had to object or approve; Jim and Juanita just set theyselves up together, and nobody the wiser. Laws'll change, 'ventually, Lena says. She's still the one what reads the papers, and she reckons tides are changin'.

Land we live on's mine, if you ask down at the survey man, but ain't like it ain't Jim's too, it's just that he still can't be the one what owns it. Between that and the rest, it's my, what the Reverend used to say was considered 'pinion, that the men which makes some a these laws got plenty a big words and a dire shortfall a good ideas. In the end, I just got to make sure I live long enough I leave it to my boys _and_ his. Jim says then he'll just have to live that long too, make sure I keep my word, but he's funnin' to make me mad to be doubted. The boys, they don't much care yet one way or t'other, and I mostly hope they never do.

**Author's Note:**

> While I've made some effort at historical accuracy sufficient for failures to be covered by Huck's frequent unreliability as a narrator, it's not entirely possible to do justice to the complexity of issues such as race, intermarriage, slavery, education, class, and social examinations of all of those things together and separately in the American west in the 1850s in one short fic. Readers should not take Huck's word for gospel here on how any of this actually worked, and should further understand that Huck canonically sees more than a few events that are both (possibly ludicrously) serendipitous and non-representative, so being true to the canon included allowing for that as well.


End file.
